According to the Oxford Centre for Evidence-based Medicine (CEBM); "The role of a scientific advisor is to offer the evidence".
They go onto explain that scientists do not present what they 'think'; they should offer the 'evidence', its strengths and weaknesses and possible interpretations.
There may be many interpretations. Therefore, the scientific process entails testing these and eliminating the unlikely ones one by one until you are left with the most likely or the least falsifiable- what you would call “following the science.”
Your interpretation may not be the truth, but it’s the one with the least uncertainty, and it allows you to weigh the known benefits and risks as dictated by the precautionary principle.
Then, if asked, you should give a view of why, on a balance of probabilities, interpretation A is more likely than B or C, bearing in mind the methodological quality of the original studies. If there is genuine uncertainty and you do not know if A Is better than B or C, then your advice should reflect this.
To ensure that advice is reliable, we must follow the scientific method, which requires testing hypotheses and acknowledging uncertainties. Any advice that fails to reflect these principles is misguided.
The trouble is that it would appear that even the most senior scientific advisors seem to forget this fundamental approach, which seems to be the message emerging from the Hallett Enquiry.
Multiple independent investigators are pointing out the corruption of the scientific approach by eminent scientific advisors to the extant that the Enquiry itself has turned into a whitewash.
The UK Covid Inquiry is fast becoming an expensive national disgrace. Rather than investigating the accuracy of mainstream narratives, it has become dominated by gossip, political theatre and the reputation management of pro-lockdown scientists.
The British public deserves better: we need an independent scientific evaluation to challenge the simplifications and mythologies being perpetuated by the inquiry.
One comment on the above article stated:
The best scientific analysis currently available on the effects of lockdowns is a meta analysis conducted by researchers at Johns Hopkins University, titled: A Literature Review and Meta-Analysis of the Effects of Lockdowns on COVID-19 Mortality,”
The study found that lockdowns in Europe and the U.S. reduced COVID-19 deaths by only 0.2 percent.
The researchers found “no evidence that lockdowns, school closures, border closures, and limiting gatherings have had a noticeable effect on COVID-19 mortality,”
The study concluded that lockdowns, “are ill-founded and should be rejected as a pandemic policy instrument.”
For the Inquiry to proceed on the assumption that lockdowns worked, when the best scientific evidence available, from a world renowned institution, is that they were almost inconsequential and had unjustifiable monstrous social and economic consequences, is disgraceful.
